Video: Modder transforms Nintendo Game Boy into Android gamepad

Posted January 10, 2013 - 18:11
by
Shane McGlaun

Most of us have a bunch of obsolete games, consoles, and other gadgets lying around our houses that are never used.

If one of those devices happens to be an old school Nintendo Game Boy, you might have thought about taking the little portable console and modding it somehow to bring it up to speed for modern times. Well, this is exactly what a modder named Chad Boughton did with his Android smartphone and obsolete Game Boy.

Boughton pried the dot-matrix display out of the Game Boy and trimmed the chassis so a GNex smartphone case could be bolted into place flush with the rest of the body. It sounds like the difficult part wasn't getting the Android smartphone to fit inside the Game Boy chassis, but rather, modifying the Game Boy buttons and D-pad to control the Android gaming action.

Getting those controls to work with the Android smartphone required trimming the circuit board and installing the innards of a Nintendo Wiimote. Once Boughton had the insides from a Wiimote installed, he was able to install the Wii controller IME app and get the Game Boy controller components working with the smartphone.

The finished product is a very slick portable gaming system for your Android smartphone. Personally, I think this is one of the coolest DIY hacks for mobile gaming I've ever seen. The device draws power from a pair of AA batteries, allowing you to play on the go. It does appear that there are a few software steps you have to go through to get the controller activated and working with the smartphone.